


Breakfast

by anonymousAlchemist



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, and love and friendship and knowing something arent always enough, if you read the first bit of this on tumblr its expanded here, or a conversation between old friends, taako is a complicated guy and memories are hard and complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-29 16:30:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11444700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist
Summary: The way he felt about the whole thing was. Complicated. You know, you look over your entire life and you believe you are one thing and then you drink some fuckin alien jellyfish goo and then a hundred years and your missing twin sister come spilling out of a lockbox in your head. And you realize you are another thing entirely.Taako doesn’t know if he’s that person anymore.It’s doublethink in his head, it’s like being two different people at the same time. There is the elf who grew up alone and crystallized callous in his own loneliness, who was a chef before he was an enchanter, who only made close friends seventy-some years into his lifespan. And there is the elf who grew up hand in hand with the best damn sister a guy could ask for, who cooked as a hobby for his friends and spent years studying magicks, who joined a mission to explore the multiverse and ended up spending a century trying to save it. Who had a family.





	1. Barry

**Author's Note:**

> me: im not gonna finish this haha have a taako snippet  
> me: aw, fuck. 
> 
> enjoy the fic!

The way he felt about the whole thing was. Complicated. You know, you look over your entire life and you believe you are one thing and then you drink some fuckin alien jellyfish goo and then a hundred years and your missing twin sister come spilling out of a lockbox in your head. And you realize you are another thing entirely.

It’s like having a single puzzle piece and thinking it’s the whole. It’s like sticking the piece into the rest of the puzzle and realizing that the picture is so much larger than you’d imagine and you were a chump for thinking that the piece was everything, that was fucking idiotic of you to think that this is all you were when you are missing so much.

Taako doesn’t know if he’s that person anymore.

It’s doublethink in his head, it’s like being two different people at the same time. There is the elf who grew up alone and crystallized callous in his own loneliness, who was a chef before he was an enchanter, who only made close friends seventy-some years into his lifespan. And there is the elf who grew up hand in hand with the best damn sister a guy could ask for, who cooked as a hobby for his friends and spent years studying magicks, who joined a mission to explore the multiverse and ended up spending a century trying to save it. Who had a family.

He looks down. Oh. The pancakes are bubbling. He flips them hastily. They’re a little too brown on the bottom. Fuck.

This used to be effortless, he thinks. It wasn’t even something he had to think about. It was natural to make breakfast for his friends when he felt like cooking, trading off meals with Lup because even after a fucking million cycles they were the only two who bothered to learn how to cook. He’d make pancakes and put extra vanilla and sliced bananas in them because Lup liked them that way.

Taako doesn’t know why he’s making breakfast this morning. He knows he’s going to check if they’re poisoned at least three times before letting anyone taste them. Maybe he’s going to throw them out anyway.

If Lup catches him, she’s going to ask him what he’s doing, and he’ll have to explain Glamour Springs to her. Forty people died. It wasn't his fault.

He hates the person he used to be, who didn’t know how good he had it.

“Oh shit, pancakes.”

Taako nearly drops the spatula. He turns. It’s Barry, who is walking through the door to the kitchen barefoot, in jeans and a pajama shirt. Taako wonders if he was sleeping in those jeans. He decides he doesn’t want to know. Barry walks up to the kitchen counter, yawning.

“Can I have some?” Barry asks, gesturing to the plate where Taako is piling pancake on top of pancake. Taako hesitates.

Barry can’t permanently die, Taako thinks to himself. You can’t poison him. You never poisoned anybody.

“Yeah man, take a pancake, do what you want my dude it’s your life,” he says, opening the fridge to pull out the syrup. It’s the artificial stuff that comes it a plastic bottle. Taako knows it's crap, but he likes it better than the real thing. It’s nostalgic, one of the better memories from his childhood. From his and Lup’s childhood, he means.

He passes the syrup to Barry, who is picking up a pancake with his bare hand, and Taako knows that he is just about to roll it up like a cigar and squirt some syrup on it and eat it in three bites like a godsdamn philistine.

“Use a fork, what are you, an animal?” Taako flicks Barry’s hand from the plate and pauses, because he can remember saying this before, so many times, like flipping through an address book except every page is a separate, visceral memory of telling Barry Bluejeans to quit fuckin eating his food with his hands, all of which he had not remembered.

“Taako? You okay?” Barry waves a hand in front of his face. He looks slightly concerned.  
“I’m fine,” Taako says. “Taako’s all good.”  
“Okay,” Barry says, and lets Taako hand him a plate and a fork, because if people are going to eat Taako’s pancakes they are going to give them the respect they deserve.

Barry uses his (newly acquired) fork to grab a couple of pancakes. Satisfied that Barry’s going to act like a civilized human being, Taako turns back to the stove. Behind him, the clink of cutlery on china and chewing. Taako’s not worried at all, nope.

“These are still great,” Barry says. He doesn’t die, which is nice. Taako grins, but his face falls. There were so many other breakfasts, he remembers. Mornings, midnights, breakfast for dinners. Exhausted conferences over the kitchen table after returning from a hard mission. Celebrations after they succeeded. Birthday mornings where they'd eat cake for breakfast. A century of them.

“How’d you do it?” Taako says.  
“Do what?” Barry stops with the fork halfway to his mouth.  
“Well, you know, you’ve been like, playing the memory corpse shuffle for the past ten years, must have been pretty rough, right? I know it’s been all sorts of weird for—” He cuts himself off. Shit! Why’d he say that? New memories interfering with all his instincts.

“Oh,” Barry puts his fork down. “You wanna. Uh. Talk about it?”  
“No,” Taako says, and flips a pancake deftly. It arcs high in the air.  
“Okay,” Barry says, in that pseudo-reassuring tone that people use when they think you’re lying about your feelings but aren’t going to call you out on it because they think you’re gonna shatter like a dropped wineglass if pressed.

“Why do you wanna know about it anyway?” Taako snaps, and he knows he shouldn’t be letting Barry get under his skin, he’s Taako from TV and nothing can touch him, and he knows that Barry isn’t asking out of malice, Barry’s good people, Barry’s like his brother. Barry’s literally his brother in law.

“Well ,we’re friends,” Barry says, simple statement of fact. “Sounded like you had something on your mind.”

Taako slides another pancake from the pan onto Barry’s plate in lieu of answer - an apology. Barry nods in thanks, and pours more syrup, picking his fork back up. Taako turns back to the stove. He has about half the batter left. He doesn’t know why he made so much. That’s a lie. He knows exactly why: muscle memory from cooking for six, one of whom was Magnus; muscle memory from SIZZLE IT UP WITH TAAKO!

He ladles batter into the pan.

“When does it stop feeling real?”  
"Huh?"  
"Like, I don't know, it's like." Taako fumbles for a way to explain. "I remember everything that happened, and I remember Lup and growing up with her, but I also remember not remembering, you know? And that feels real, it feels like something that happened even more than my actual real life does. And it's a fucking trip! Like who the fuck am I anymore, you dig?"

Barry nods. Taako continues.

"Like. When we were kids, Lup and I got left behind at a rest stop on the road once, like, the two of us somehow got straight up forgotten for a couple of hours before our cousin realized that we were gone and was like oh shit and came back. And I was scared, but it was fine! It was totally baller because me and Lup just shot the shit and stole some candy and played some pranks on people. I think we stole a hat? I don't know. We talked about stealing a horse, I think," Taako pauses. "But I also remember being left behind alone at the rest stop, and nobody else being there, and waiting for hours and that. That majorly sucked. And it feels like something that happened."

The long years of trusting no one, the endless succession of relatives and caravans and hitchhiking. He knows they aren't real. They feel real. His sister feels like a fantasy, a wishful thought. He would have given anything for a friend, when he was a kid. He had the best friend a guy could ask for.

"You're allowed to have feelings," Barry says. "Take it from the guy who's been running around following instructions without his memory for the last ten years. What you're feeling is, uh, valid."  
Taako snorts. "That's the corniest shit I've ever heard, my dude, where'd you pick that up, an afternoon kids special?"  
"Okay, uh, well first of all, fuck you, and second of all, stop deflecting," Barry says sternly. "And, and I'm saying this as your friend, not s like your sister's husband or the guy who was following you around for the past year which I admit was pretty creepy, but anyways. You're allowed to have feelings, you know? The stuff that happened while you didn't have your memory was all real."  
"But what about the stuff that didn't happen?" Taako counters. "Shit. I don't know." He flips a pancake. "I don't even know why I'm doing this. Like I remember doing this," he says, gesturing with his spatula at this whole breakfast situation, "but fuck if I know why I'm doing this now. Like, I'm not that sort of guy. Taako doesn't do shit like this."

I think I'm only good with her, he does not say. Who I was before wouldn't have cared for who I became without my memory, Taako does not say. And I don't look the same anymore. We're not identical. She left. I forgot her. My life feels like a story someone else has told me.

He pours the last of the batter into the pan. The pancakes are stacked high on the plate. He should put it into the oven to keep them warm.

"You made them the way Lup likes them," Barry says.  
"Yeah," Taako says, staring at the pale circle bubbling in the pan. "I did."


	2. Lup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup walks in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this kind of got away from me, haha

The kitchen smells like vanilla and sweet syrup. Taako slides the last pancake onto the stack. One platter of totally good, not poisoned pancakes. Sprinkling his salt shaker over the pile, he is quietly relieved that they don't turn pink. In retrospect he should have done this before letting Barry eat them. 

Barry is sitting at the kitchen table, working his way through his plate. He had wanted to talk more, but Taako had shut it down. Taako doesn't feel like talking anymore. Taako wants to put this plate of pancakes in the oven to keep warm, leave a note that says "pancakes in the oven, dipshits," and then get the fuck out of this room which smells like melted butter and memories. 

Gods. Breakfast was a bad idea. It's making him maudlin. Best to put it behind him. 

Caught up in his thoughts, Taako doesn't hear the click of high-heels on the floor, the tap of an umbrella. 

Lup sashays into the room, umbrella bouncing. "You made pancakes!" 

"Hi Lulu," Taako says, startled, and for fucks sake, that sounds ridiculous but it just slipped out of his mouth, right, he calls her Lulu and she sometimes calls him Koko and its sometimes a joke but also not a joke, its nicknames from when they were kids and had nobody else to call them nicknames. 

"Morning, Lu," Barry says, smiling at her like she's what makes the sun rise in the morning. She walks over to him to give him a good-morning kiss, as if they hadn't seen each other just a couple of hours ago. Taako looks away. Not that he's not happy for them, but PDA that doesn't involve Taako and Taako's party of choice isn't really his thing. Especially not Barry and his sister. Ick. They're way too close together. 

"I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna skedaddle," Taako motions toward the door. "You know where the syrup and stuff is. My work here is donezo." 

Lup turns away from mackin on her fiancee. She pins Taako with a capital-L Look. Taako immediately stops walking. It's like instinct. 

"Did you eat yet?" 

"Uh," Taako says, and motions to the pile of pancakes as if to indicate that well, he made the whole mess of them, of course he ate breakfast. Lup rolls her eyes, leans over with her umbrella and hooks his arm by the handle. Taako stumbles, lets himself be pulled. Why does he do that? Why is it okay? 

There were so many times Lup dragged him somewhere, or he dragged her somewhere, arm in arm, cmon, you have to try this, I want to go shopping, let's go fleece that guy at poker. The push and pull of any relationship, the allowance that this person is okay in my space and a comfort, not an anxiety. 

Taako remembers watching kids holding hands to cross the street, and wondering why nobody ever held his. He didn't have parents. He wasn't great at making friends. 

"C'mon. Eat breakfast with us. Uh, me," Lup amends, looking at the syrup pool on Barry's plate, devoid of pancakes or other breakfast foods. "You hanging around?" 

Barry shakes his head. "Got some work to do, but I'll see you two later," he says, getting up from the table. He claps Taako on the shoulder and says, "Thanks for breakfast," before ambling out the door, hands in the back pockets of his jeans. 

Taako has the sneaking suspicion he's been outmaneuvered. 

When he turns back to Lup, she's taken Barry's plate over to the faucet, rinsing it off and leaving it in the sink. She washes her hands, and opens the fridge. Taako leans against the countertop, watches her for a moment. There is something utterly familiar in her movements, the way she hums as she pulls out ingredients and rearranges things inside the fridge, the way she leans over with her foot to nudge a low cupboard open.

He feels like he should be annoyed about this. He hates it when other people are in his kitchen. It doesn't feel right, not to mind. 

Lup pulls out eggs, bacon. Glancing at Taako, she shrugs. "Might as well make more stuff before we eat; everyone else's probably going to be down soon. And I want bacon."

"Well sure," Taako says. He doesn't mind making more stuff. It beats sitting across from Lup at the kitchen table and not being sure what to say. He hates that he doesn't know what to say. She's his sister. They've known each other since the literal womb. Her face used to be the mirror image of his own. He remembers a life where she didn't exist, and it's not like he can _tell her_ that she feels like a dream to him, that is to say, fake and not real. A good dream, the best dream, but still a dream. 

He takes the carton of eggs and starts cracking them into a bowl. Lup passes him the milk, and he takes it with a quick mage hand and pours a bit in before she grabs it with her own mage hand and screws the top back on, sticking it onto the fridge shelf. She pulls out a hunk of cheese and tosses it to him. He catches it, and she's already opened the drawer so he pulls out a grater and a fork and then he hands the fork to her so that she can start separating the slices of bacon and laying them on a cookie sheet to bake. It's neater than frying. He starts grating the cheese onto a plate with another mage hand to fold into the eggs after they're beaten. 

"This is nice," Lup says. 

"Yeah," Taako says, more out of a lack of anything else to say. The neat synchrony that they're working in unnerves him. Every action he takes, she responds to, and vice versa, a perfect call and response that he remembers perfecting, wearing away the edges of their clumsiness in the kitchen on each other until they were a cooking _machine._

A decade ago, he held court in the kitchen and never let anyone else touch his equipment.

The silence should be comfortable, Taako thinks. He beats the eggs harder, turns the stove back on and waits for it to warm up. Lup brushes slices of bacon with maple syrup (the real stuff this time). Taako turns the oven on to preheat, too, and after a moments thought, sticks the pancakes in to keep warm until the bacon is ready to go in. That's probably fine. 

"What was it like, having a cooking show?" Lup asks as Taako fiddles with the oven dial. He shrugs, grins. 

"It was fun. Nothing better than hearing crowds applaud for you, or people appreciating your showmanship, you feel?" He waves a hand over the frying pan, and dumps the entire bowl of eggs in, setting a mage hand to stir 'em around as they cook. "It was a good time. Went really well," he lies. "Missed you though," he jokes weakly. "Well, okay, that one's a lie." 

"I'm sorry I was gone so long," Lup says, and to Taako's horror, she's biting her lip, looking away from him, hesitating. "I didn't mean to—" 

"It's okay!" Taako says, gesturing, backtracking. "It's fine! I know why you felt like you had to go, it's totally cool no problem—" 

"It's not okay!" Lup exclaims, drowning Taako's protests out, grabbing his hand to stop him. "It's not fine! None of this is fine! I was gone forever and you and Barry went looking for me and then Lucretia made everyone forget and then you forgot me for ten years, Taako. That's–" she cuts herself off. 

Taako doesn't know how he's supposed to react. 

She's wearing heels. He's not. She's taller than him this way. She's prettier than him now, too, and that shouldn't bother him and it doesn't but it also does, her face is no longer his face, and that shouldn't bother him because Taako is a one-of-a-kind original. But this is Taako-and-Lup, Taako-and-Lup who dressed in each others clothing and pretended to be one another, their similarity a reassurance that there's at least one other person in the world who cares about him, who he cares for, confirmation that they're siblings, that they're a team. 

Taako's first memory is of sitting alone on a couch with a chocolate bar to keep him quiet. Taako's first memory is of sitting next to Lup, both of them pudgy toddlers deposited on someone's couch, given a chocolate bar to keep them quiet. He remembers it melting in his hands, smearing it on Lup's face and laughing.

Their hands are the same size, Taako thinks absently. She's got purple polish on, him, pink. Lup looks like she's maybe going to cry.

He hugs her, because he can't think of anything else to do. 

There's a tension in Lup's spine that he didn't realize was there. He realizes it's been there this entire morning, entire time she's been talking with him, the stiffness now leaking out as she clutches him. She feels very real, suddenly. How could he make her up? 

"I missed you," she says, small and ashamed as if she thinks she has no right to the emotion, and it's not right that Lup is saying something quietly. "I thought maybe it'd be good if we did something normal, like make breakfast or something, and it's, it's not like this is normal anymore, it's been ten years and I left and it's my fault and you should be mad at me." 

"I'm not mad at you. I didn't know I missed you," Taako says, muffled into her shoulder. 

"I kind of wish you had," she mumbles. "Isn't that awful?" 

"Life without you majorly sucked," Taako confesses. "And sometimes my memories of you don't feel real."

"I'm sorry," Lup says again.

"It's not your fault, Lulu," Taako says. "I think we can all agree that one is specifically on Lucretia." 

That gets a shake-shouldered laugh out of her, and she lets him go, reluctantly. He unwraps his arms from her waist. She sniffs, and wipes her eyes on her jacket. 

"You're smudging your eyeliner," Taako says reflexively, and wets a finger at the sink, tilting Lup's face to fix it. She lets him, closing her eyes so he can smear the black line back into submission. "Okay, you're good." 

"Thanks," she says. 

"No problem," Taako says. The moment's passed. He feels kind of stupid now. He can smell something burning? "Oh shit, the eggs!" 

He scrambles to check on the eggs, which are fortunately not all that overdone. He starts plating them, pulling down a large serving platter and heaping it high. The oven beeps; done preheating. Lup takes the pancakes out and pops the tray of bacon in. Taako glances at her as she stands back up. 

It's not all going to be okay, he thinks. But this is better than he could have imagined, when he was a kid and growing up without anyone else. It was better than he could have imagined, growing up with Lup. 

"Hey," Taako says. "While we're waiting, do you want to hear about all the shit I did while you were gone?" 

"Yeah," Lup says, smiling. "I'd love to." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise! theres an optional epilogue!  
> anyway, that's a wrap, thanks for reading, lemme know what you thought on your way out :) i got a lot of feelings about this so hit me up if you wanna kick around taako & lup discourse


	3. Taako

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> epilogue time!

They're still talking when the rest of their friends drift in, one by one, filling plates and sitting at the kitchen table or standing at the counter because there's not enough seats, spilling out into the living room, wandering out and back again. Kravitz doesn't eat anything but sits down next to Taako for a while, arm around his waist. Angus runs in, and Lup grabs him and fills him a plate of food, even though he insists he's old enough to do it himself, and as soon as he's done eating he bolts back out saying something about an investigation.

Magnus looks delighted to see the breakfast spread, and Merle pats Taako and Lup on the shoulder as he walks over to the spread. Lucretia gets a small smile from him, though he's not quite ready to forgive her. Carey and Killian walk in laughing about something, faces curved toward one another like sunflowers to the sun. Captain Davenport smiles and says this is like a blast from the past, looking pleased. Barry comes in late, nose buried in a book, and picks up a piece of bacon with his hands before Taako can stop him.

The air smells like maple syrup and baked goods. Lup is laughing at something Merle said. It's a pretty good morning, Taako thinks, and takes a bite of his pancakes. 

Yeah. Still got it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading :)

**Author's Note:**

> i guess you could call this narratively consistent with "liminal spaces" tbh. 
> 
> bonus content: if you put more vanilla than they say to put in your baked goods they always taste better. trust me. im a scientist. im not a scientist.  
> other pancake hacks: if you make a bunch of pancakes (without fruit tho) and freeze them you can have instant pancakes later by popping them in the toaster. these babies keep for months and are good for when you want a pancake and dont want to make pancakes. also bananas and extra vanilla are good in pancakes. chocolate chips will make your pancakes stick to the pan but are worth it. if you make a bunch of small pancakes you can eat more pancakes, or at least you'll feel like you're eating more pancakes. 
> 
> gosh. writing taako is hard, my dudes.
> 
> find me at @[anonymousalchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com/) if u wanna talk taz n fandom!
> 
> liner notes for this fic are [here (ch1)](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com/post/162769198297/taako-memory-taz-notes) and [here(ch2)!](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com/post/162861524537/taako-memory-lup-notes-pt-2)


End file.
